Relations between the Laity and the Parochial Clergy During the Henrician Reformation: The Case of the North and West Midlands

Although the concept of anti-clericalism in the early sixteenth century has been successfully challenged, there remain the questions whether and to what extent there was dissatisfaction with the secular clergy. The comprehensive consideration of the Catholic clergy by Peter Marshall approached those issues from a variety of angles. More recently, Tim Cooper has exonerated the secular clergy of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Attitudes to the clergy in that diocese are re-examined here through a detailed analysis of testamentary bequests by the laity to the secular (parochial) clergy, from the late 1520s to 1546, throughout the various mutations in direction of the Henrician Reformation. A certain level of indifference is detected in the general paucity of death-bed considerations for the clergy.